A week on the web: the Raspberry Pi

The launch of the Raspberry Pi – a no-frills computer that costs just £22 – was so well received that the websites selling it crashed. But is the device set to revolutionise the way in which children learn IT, as the inventors hope? We tested the online waters to find out

A new computer went
on sale this week. It doesn’t have a keyboard or screen, and won’t win any
design plaudits from Jonathan Ive.
And yet the device - the size of a credit card - sold out immediately, crashing
the websites selling it in the process.

In short, its
creators hope it will inspire a new generation of schoolchildren to learn to
program, just as the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Micro did in the 1980s. The Pi
may be humble, but its impact could be profound. The Guardian even devoted an
editorial to it.

Key quote from that piece: “I’m
48, I also think that Scalextric and model kits are things children play with.
In reality the people who buy such things are my age and older. Today’s kids
aren’t interested. The world has moved on. The BBC Micro does not need to be
repeated. Yes it would be great to have today’s teens learning about how a
computer works, how to write code and solder a good connection, but the analogy
has been made that programming is the new Latin and it holds true.”

So will the
people it’s aimed at – children – embrace this with the same enthusiasm as
geeks on a nostalgia trip? Let’s hope so. As our own Martin Belam pointed out,
the way in which IT is taught in schools is due an overhaul.

Yes kids, that’s
what computer games were like back in the mid-80s. Here’s Fred Harris – better
known to viewers of children’s TV in the 80s as Chock-A-Bloke – extolling the virtues of the
‘cutting edge’ Amiga 32 and a fancy new visual programming language.

So will Raspberry
Pi turn out to have the same impact on this generation of kids as Elite, the
BBC Micro and Sinclair Spectrum had on the children of yesteryear? Only time
will tell. One thing’s for sure: its name has a certain resonance to it.